CERN (Conseil
Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire --
European Council for Nuclear Research) is teaming up with United Nations
Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR), and the University of Geneva to create
an organization dubbed "Citizen Cyberscience
Centre", which looks to test and deploy similar projects.

The Citizen Cyberscience Centre just yesterday released [press
release] its second generation LHC@home software, whose ambitious goal is to
assist scientists with locating the legendary Higgs boson and other exotic
particles.

Its concept is that while scientists have advanced
physics theory that tells them how they expect systems to behave, they can't
actually give a prediction of how a particular system will behave until they
put that theory into a system. With LHC@home, members of the public can
install a client on their computers, which will apply their spare computing
power towards simulating high-energy collisions between protons. The
results will then be compared with experimental data from real-world LHC runs
to narrow the search for items of interest.

Professor Dave Britton of the University of Glasgow, a researcher who previously
worked on the CMS LHC sensor, and currently works on the ATLAS sensor project, is a developer of cloud-based particle physics computing schemes. While not directly affiliated with the LHC@home code, he voiced enthusiasm on the effort, which is similar to his own GridPP (www.gridpp.ac.uk) distributed particle physics effort.

He remarks, "Scientists like me are trying to
answer fundamental questions about the structure and origin of the Universe.
Through the Citizen Cyberscience Centre and its volunteers around the world,
the Grid computing tools and techniques that I use everyday are available to
scientists in developing countries, giving them access to the latest computing
technology and the ability to solve the problems that they are facing, such as
providing clean water. Whether you're interested in finding the Higgs boson,
playing a part in humanitarian aid or advancing knowledge in developing
countries, this is a great project to get involved with."

II. LHC@home Can Also be Used to Protect
Forests -- and Lives

The new project will also be applied to processing
satellite data from governments and private entities to protect the environment
and human lives. These applications will also draw computing resources
from the LHC@home 2.0 client.

One plan involves tracking of natural disasters
such as floods, tsunamis, and earthquakes. Such a project could help aid
workers locate injured people, saving lives. It could also help people
avoid imminent natural disasters.

Additionally, the processing power can be used to
track deforestation. This will allow international governments and
environmental action organizations to assess the extent of environmental damage
and loss of biodiversity. This will allow them to better formulate plans
of action to preserve our planet's natural treasures.

Describes Francesco Pisano, Manager of
UNOSAT, "From a development and humanitarian perspective, the potential of
citizen-powered research is enormous. Participating in the Citizen Cyberscience
Centre enables us to get new insights into the cutting edge of crowdsourcing
technologies. There is no doubt that volunteers are playing an increasingly
central role in dealing with crisis response, thanks to the Internet."

III. Project is True Team Effort

While it may sound like the public is doing all
the work on these projects, they also require a great deal of effort from CERN
and its partners. Not only do they have to develop all the software, but
they also have to process the data down to a form that's digestible by the
"volunteer cloud".

To that end the UK's Science & Technology
Facilities Council is providing one of the world's top ten Tier 1 data centers
to serving up information to LHC@home 2.0 clients.

The reward, though, of the marriage of academia,
government institutions, and the public is in producing a distributed
supercomputer that far exceeds the capacity of even today's most
powerful stand-alone installations.

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Please don't get me wrong, I find your argument highly amusing from specifically a philosophical standpoint. It is highly titillating to consider and I would be adverse if I said I had never considered it myself as I have--but purely as an exercise in philosophy, not science.

However, as you said earlier:

quote: String theory is idiotic and ridiculous...the fact that it gets serious consideration is even more troubling...I mean it was practically created backwards - where they defined the "ideal" solution and then made up a bunch of math that would lead to their solution.

You debunk the string theorists, yet you yourself:

quote: Actually there are no atoms - that was just a thought exercise to help you visualize the fact that existence is mere perception. There are no particles or anything if we're talking about the "universal truth", but from our perspective these things seem to exist. Entropy does not exist because there is neither order nor chaos in a void. All that "exists" (and I do not like using that word to describe this) is a singular, eternal moment where nothing and everything happens.

Which, like the string theorists, we have no proof for nor any way to ever prove this true (as of now we can't ever hope to observe a string due to how small they are and how large photons are--though I have ideas as to how to get around that). If we are trapped in a singular, eternal moment where nothing and everything happens, then it is both immeasurable and instantaneous. It is eternal in our eyes as the flow of events happen so quickly that our "brains" are dialed up to process so rapidly that the events seem to take "time" but our perceived time is a microcosm of the moment. What is here this second, everything that is here as you insinuate, will be gone the next second and we will be left with nothing or everything--or maybe our universe will change state completely, say from a binary 0 to a binary 1.

Or perhaps it will meet an untimely demise as it comes crashing into another dimensional barrier (a dimension to us, mind you) and drench the outer walls with this splattered concoction.

All in all though, if we are in a fleeting void, then what exactly is the point at trying to solve "worldly" problems such as poverty, starvation, famine, death, war, or even seeking a cure to aging. If as you say we will never be able to leave our sandbox, then what is the point to existing at all, period. We've answered "how" here, but there is no point in answering "why."

Thus, you've created the perfect paradox. A paradox that suggests that chaos is ultimately the supreme solution to our universal quandry as any attempt at maintaining order will ultimately be met with complete oblivion. There is no point in existing at all. So why care then? Why not do what we each individually desire with such an outlook?

What you speak of is purely philosophy and not science. Science is measurable, testable and either provable or disprovable. What you mention is neither but certainly worthy of extended discussion. The human condition alone can benefit from such musings.

quote: Which, like the string theorists, we have no proof for nor any way to ever prove this true (as of now we can't ever hope to observe a string due to how small they are and how large photons are--though I have ideas as to how to get around that). If we are trapped in a singular, eternal moment where nothing and everything happens, then it is both immeasurable and instantaneous. It is eternal in our eyes as the flow of events happen so quickly that our "brains" are dialed up to process so rapidly that the events seem to take "time" but our perceived time is a microcosm of the moment.

The reason string theory fails is that it's arbitrary. They couldn't get it to work with 3, 4 or 5 "dimensions" so they kept adding them until they found a formula that gives them the desired result. This is bad science because it isn't making any observations, nor does it match with what we can observe. Now I will not exclude that there are multiple "dimensions" because as I have been saying, nothing and everything occur simultaneously and dimensions are certainly a possibility that is included under "everything"...but string theory as an explanation of the fundmentals...it is not.

quote: What is here this second, everything that is here as you insinuate, will be gone the next second and we will be left with nothing or everything--or maybe our universe will change state completely, say from a binary 0 to a binary 1.

I don't anything comes and goes. We need to make things linear or quantifiable so we can comprehend it. Absolutes and lack of limits are not things our mind can contend with.

quote: Or perhaps it will meet an untimely demise as it comes crashing into another dimensional barrier (a dimension to us, mind you) and drench the outer walls with this splattered concoction.

Back to the scaling factor, where I said it is possible to scale infinitely from a perspective of an atom and smaller to that of a planet and larger...do you notice how space doesn't exist? The smaller the scale, the greater the apparent distance between "objects"...but nothing ever moves and the "volume" never changes.

That's as much as I can say definitively, but I would speculate that there is an "existence" where the being perceives an atom to be the relative size of a planet (as it is to us). If that were true, it wouldn't be unreasonable to suggest that each atom is potentially a galaxy in itself (considering the amount of energy that is released during nuclear reactions).

quote: All in all though, if we are in a fleeting void, then what exactly is the point at trying to solve "worldly" problems such as poverty, starvation, famine, death, war, or even seeking a cure to aging. If as you say we will never be able to leave our sandbox, then what is the point to existing at all, period. We've answered "how" here, but there is no point in answering "why."

Let's put it this way - just because one knows the rules to a game does not make him a master of said game. My "reality" is that for now I am confined to this sandbox with others and while I'm here I'd like it to be an awesome sandbox. I think you answered your own question, but rather than saying "we can never leave our sandbox" I'd like to say "it is unlikely that we will can leave our sandbox"...and would we even want to leave?

quote: Thus, you've created the perfect paradox. A paradox that suggests that chaos is ultimately the supreme solution to our universal quandry as any attempt at maintaining order will ultimately be met with complete oblivion. There is no point in existing at all. So why care then? Why not do what we each individually desire with such an outlook?

Your chaos is my order. Whose to say that there isn't a being who can look at a pile of sand and see "patterns of organized logic" where we see "chaotic randomness"?

We don't need to ask "what's the point" of existing. We have what we have, so instead of looking into the void for answers that ultimately do not matter, why not ask "how can I make the existence better for myself and those around me?" I don't see it as a paradox like you said.